I Will Wait andListen

Did You listen when I prayed

Did You hear my words 

Perhaps I asked in plain speech

and  You wanted sounds leavened 

with metaphors and tears

My heart carried plaintive sounds,

my words held fragments of a narrative 

My daughter, I said, stopped talking to me

when I spoke of loving a woman 

She left no space to speak

I prayed and asked for help—

Year after year I spoke and you remained

cloistered, silent and withdrawn

Were you testing my resolve

Now years beyond 

my first request

a doorway opened

and we shared words

—syllables exchanged between strangers

Now I pray for a bridge 

to span the divide

I will wait and listen

Two Sides to Words

 Psalm 12

Two Sides to Words

When lies intrude

displacing truths

with fabrications

a collision exists

between words 

that ferment unease 

and words that cross boundaries

to smooth rough places 

to offer hope 

When people speak with hollow words 

with words of derision

with words that spew unrest 

Adonai looks upon his gift 

of language—mangled, distorted 

by supple tongues and shorn of love 

and seeks those who use words 

to bless, to love 

to embrace

Wandering on a Möbius

 Psalm 11

G-d of many names

I called you Adonai

I called you Jesus

Today I call you Adonai

     and wrap myself

     in ancient words

You heard me

Watched while 

I pursued you

Walked with me

Sheltered me 

within your embrace

I heard others

snicker, paint me

chameleon 

Turn their cackle

into hollow moans

Force them to chew

their words

until spittle

garbles their speech

Restore their words

Winnowed

scrubbed and cleanest

with love

#BlogElul Day 29

 Repent 

you start where you stand

review the past year and find

frayed places to repair

#BlogElul Day 28

 Give in and Aploogize

You gotta give some

relax the do and don’t

Forget about waiting on

someone else to strut

one foot and the other—

swallow being stubborn—

if you wait until one foot

standing on the other side

time may just keep moving—

no one hears when you shout

from that distance

say what you need to say now

#BlogElul Day 27

Bless

Blessings surround me

As I hear silence circle

I sense God’s presence

#BlogElul Day 26

 Create

i render a landscape in pen and ink

add mountains with raw umber

and burnt sienna watercolors—

step back and dip a brush into

indian red and rose 

add a hint of sun

spray water across the paper

take care not to blur colors 

dip a wide brush into cerulean

blue—a faint color waiting for

ultramarine to bellow across

white rough watercolor paper—

add trees—mountain paper birch, 

quaking aspen, and one unseen tree—

as an afterthought i ink in

a line of spruce pines

and a lone jack pine

i create an echo

a facsimile

#BlogElul Day 25

 I Intend

              “We are not sent into the world

                 to do anything into which

                 we cannot put our hearts.”

                  —-John Ruskin

my list

grows, a vine climbing

without pruning 

until it swallows time

with seductive possibilities 

 i will interrogate each item

#BlogElul. Day 24

 Hope

To love the other

To listen to silent words

and hear another

#BlogElul Day 23

 I Begin to Imagine Miriam’s Well

I take small steps,

follow a path 

filled with turnoffs,

stop

identify local topography

and pick two blooms

say their names 

then move on

to another meadow

I look for blossoms,

dig down to roots

and study each fiber,

anchor, support

water supply

well

#BlogElul Day 22

 

To End is Only To Begin Again

endings dwell in beginnings,

time continues, but

infinite hours remain beyond 

my province— 

there is yet time

to repair the places where

seams loosened and junctures 

separated, where frayed spots

grew thin—

time to walk toward another

extend a hand

and begin to patch

to mend 

to repair

to repent

#BlogElul Day 21

 Love

“Tell me, you who my soul loves... 1:7

“...and my insides stirred.” 5:4

                  Song of Songs

In the midst of scripture—a love poem

A paean to sensual delights

An invitation to love generously

I, too, feel my body shift and stir

as I whisper the lines

“I am my beloved’s, 

and my beloved is mine...”

#BlogElul Day 20

    Dare

I remember when

the best swimmer at the “Y”

dared me to swim 

two pool lengths underwater

I tried over and over

until a game of Marco Polo 

changed the subject 

Now I read and read

translation after translation

looking for a lens to 

understand each psalm

I dare myself to reimagine 

the words as mine

I am David

I am each person

who wraps herself in words,

crossing out

adding

until the psalm is mine

#BlogElul Day 19

Who Will Judge

    Who will remember

those who choose to cast off  the

needy among us

#BlogElul Day 18

 Ask

A simple question

of the universe

What happens to words

after they are said ?

#BlogElul Day 17

Awaken To Love

Take a deep breath, the 

universe opens her arms

and welcomes us all

#BlogElul Day 4

Understand

  

      After watching 

      the Republican National Convention

                   I can’t understand 

the accolades, the praise 

the parade of toadies

the lies, the painting

of  the other as dangerous

How do they excuse lies

How do they defend 

twisted words, a rewrite of reality

Don’t they hear the sound of steel boots

Don’t they know history 

Don’t they hear screaming rhetoric,

repetition of words, of framing

the other with symbols of fear

I hear the footfalls 

What don’t they see

What don’t they hear

What don’t they understand

about where we are heading

Their vision ignores the signposts

#BlogElul Day 16

Pray

I listen to G-D’s voice

when wind brushes against grass,

when waves gather momentum 

before spending their foam

on a shore dotted with Sandpipers

I see G-D’s hand in orange and red

hoodoos reaching upward—

becoming a cathedral of spires

I stretch my hand until my fingers 

touch layers 

of sandstone, shale, and limestone—

a story two billion years old

I inhale the aroma of rain washed herbs

I pray to this G-d of creation

#BlogElul Day 14

 Learn

Listen to silence

and hear the past 

View abandoned junctures

buried under slabs of time

that haunt the present

and wait for light,

for a chance to shake

off layers of neglect

#BlogElulDay 15

 Change

Summer creeps toward autumn

muting her colors, bringing a descent

of light, a rush toward dusk

Yet, a few days stay behind

unwilling to keep step

They capture summer’s warmth,

a reprieve, a chance to linger

##BlogElul Day 13

Remember

Before—

always before

Looking backwards

to recall a time before the now

A palmist reads shapes and lines,

hand shapes, fingernails, texture of skin

to create a text of what story remains

Scripture retells a narrative,

a history of a people, a key to remember 

our ancestors

#BlogElul Day 12

Forgive

To forgive

does not mean to forget

or blot out from memory

Some words remain

Some actions stay embedded

To forgive

does not mean to issue a free pass

or to engage in magic thinking

To me it means that I will

not carry around a lodestone

weighing me down

I will forgive words and actions 

but it doesn’t mean I will respect

or condone or not call out

I will not wait for you to ask

for forgiveness

It will be a free gift

A gift I will accept as well 

#BlogElul Day 11

 Trust

In a temperate zone

it is a cycle of promises—

spring will appear and wipe

away reminders of winter—

the pile of snow that resists melting,

icicles hanging off the roof edge

and bushes bent from the weight of winter

Spring is not happenstance 

nor a fortunate phenomenon 

or based on mathematical probability

nor the rermedy for Demeter’s 

design for winter—instead

spring is woven from 

the thread of creation 

#BlogElul Day 10

Count

Each day I count my tomatoes,

check to see a change from green 

When I walk up and down hills

my watch counts my steps, my pulse

rate, distance in miles, time—

It keeps a record of my longest walk,

my speed—even calories used

If I  count those times, 

I let myself down—an errant word,

hyperbole, a reconstructed story 

with missing parts, and the times I

looked away, invisible to myself—

too busy to count the hollow 

places in need of repair

#BlogElul 9

     To See

My eyes only see

innocence when I root out

common unkindness

#BlogElul Day 8

 Hear

          “I am my prayer.”

           Va’ani Tefilati

my grandfather

faced the open window 

and looked beyond 

his street, past the boys

playing stickball,

past the girls jumping rope

 miming each action

     Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

     Turn around,

     Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

     Touch the ground

past the sounds of women

playing mahjong,

calling out their tiles

Dragons, Flowers, Seasons,

the Four Winds

in a staccato rendition

Past the Snow Cone man

selling flavored shaved ice

     My grandfather David davens

     and ancient prayers 

     echo across time 

     I listen—

     hear my lineage

     and pray

 

#BlogElul Day 7

 Be

A tear in a piece of cloth,

a seam undone

a loose thread pulled

until a hem is loosened

A friend who drifts away

with words unsaid

Who will sew the places

torn by overuse

or will time be allowed

to cover up the words

and seams remain split

#BlogElul Day 6

 Know

            One thing I ask of the LORD,

                     it is this that I seek—

             that I dwell in the house of the LORD

                     all the days of my life,

              to behold the LORD’s sweetness

                     and to gaze on His palace.

                             Psalm 27:4     The Book of Psalms. 

                                                          Robert Alter

I wander between the words

parsing out meanings,

finding a place to rest

If I ask this, what is asked of me

It is not the trappings—

my books stacked in bookcases

and in piles around my chair

It is not my art supplies—tubes of paints,

a few sable brushes, half finished

sketchbooks waiting for another line

It is not the words copied from books

Quotations and aphorisms 

Snippets from newspapers

nor is it my own writings

I have little to offer

My tomato plant —a small harvest

LORD feels too heavy, I shall use 

one of your other names—Ha Shem

I have no first fruits, nothing

except myself—flaws, doubts 

and at times turning my back

and walking the other way

Yet, I know I hear the words

and turn—I am here

warts and all asking

to dwell

in that same house

#BlogElul Day 5

       

    Accept

edit your life now

           liberate the past, move on

             engage reflection  

#BlogElul Day 3.

 Search

      The real road of discovery consists

      not in seeing new landscapes,

      but in having new eyes.

                  —Marcel Proust

A dark sky blots out trees 

erases clean contours

while rain waits to wash away

chalk drawings left by children

It pushes  cyclists to switch gears

in an attempt to move beyond

the sounds of thunder

A woman pushing a stroller 

looks at the sky and begins to run

I am outside waiting for the rain

I wait for the drops to wash over me

Rain nurtures my roses

and feeds small saplings 

I, too, seek to grow

#BlogElul Day 2

Act 

           

                Don’t turn your face away.

            Once you’ve seen, you can no longer act like you don’t know.

              Open your eyes to the truth. It’s all around you.

            Don’t deny what the eyes to your soul have revealed to you.

                Vashti Quiroz-Vega

bundled in blankets

sleeping on a mattress

of corrugated cardboard

wearing heavy clothes

even when the television prophet 

predicts hot steamy weather

and exhorts listeners to drink

water, stay cool

in the morning the blanket

folded into a square

packed

into a grocery cart 

and pushed down the street

to a square of concrete

a sun the size of a quarter

illuminates a handheld sign

hungry in black letters 

homeless in block print

tonight 

the blankets

stay in the cart

is it time

to act